This one has been held back for a while to ensure that the posts were chronological - but the history of 2.6 has long been written. This round is one of the best known and the story is fairly familiar to all.

As always, I have leaned and borrowed on accounts from others as well as my own memories and records. As this round was one of the most contentious, I have made a great effort to be as factually accurate as possible with all the details.

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2.6

Political Backdrop:The coalition ties of the previous round dropped with the round end, and 2.6 was more marked by alliances operating on their own. The former Arcani and Cado Angelus players who had formed Sexey Dawn mostly started under a new alliance for the round, Aku Senshi, allied with Imperials. Fury and Warriors both set up to play the round on their own, as did KAOS. Neither Deranged Space Pilots or Hunting from A224 reformed for the new round. Awakening Dreams, RONIN and newly formed alliance Jade Triad all operated on their own in pursuit of specific goals. The only real grouping was led by Shattered Dawn, who allied XF and Guardians of Destruction (GoD). The latter was formed of predominantly Polish raiders from among XF, SH and DR.

Gameplay Changes:The game changes between the two Alternity rounds reflected the least changes between any rounds. Good and evil alliances were removed and all alliances became neutral. Four additional systems were added and additional links from either end of the figure-of-eight map introduced for greater mobility. One unannounced change that went unnoticed until late in the round was the increase in port shields and armour from 2500 of each per level to 3000 of each per level.

Fury's Plan ... and the False Start:For the start of 2.6 Fury - this round without allies - developed a plan for the opening days. With mainly zalluns and snivs, they would trade as carefully as possible on the opening day, conserving turns for raiders and escorts. On the third day of the round, they would raid every single station, using AI persecutor raiders - netting a significant number of kills and a huge money headstart to set them up for the rest of the round. However, the very start of the round was affected by a bug. Offline players were not receiving turns. An attempted fix went wrong as some players who logged in received maximum turns. Word of this quickly spread and eventually maximum turns were given to everyone to fix the imbalance.

Afraid someone would beat them to the opening move, Fury set their plan in place a day earlier. Every single station in the galaxy was raided, as per the plan. To make use of the additional opportunity of the maximum turns, Fury finished up by raiding nearly every port in the Ward (22) system, adding further to their bank balances. The resultant outcry was predictable: as everyone saw it, Fury had 'abused' the maximum turns and the imbalance was clear. After a lot of difficult thinking, the Admins decided after the third day to reset the round. 2.6.0 was over and instead the second attempt at a start, 2.6.1, would be the round that everyone knew as 2.6.

Take II - Same Result:The round restarted the following day and all the alliances and players resumed their plans for the round start. Fury again conserved the turns for their raiders and escorts besides careful alignment-focused trading, while others traded up the initial cost of the ships. On the third day of the round, Fury put in place their initial strategy once more. Every station in the game was raided in succession, with raiders carefully rotated to prolong the raids as long as possible. The lack of additional turns meant that the port raids weren't added to the tally. Fears that others would now know the plan and jump the raids proved false - everyone had put the raids in 2.6.0 just down to the bonus turns and not the pre-prepared strategy for the round.

Dominant Start and Early-Round Politics:The successful early raids were not a sign for Fury to rest on their laurels. These were followed up with increasing number of raids as the original raiders were built up to take tougher targets. Ports and planets alike were raided as Fury dominated the round start. Some jumps were forthcoming, particularly from both Warriors and Shattered Dawn, with mixed success. The early round was also marked by political realignments. Aku Senshi disbanded and their former members mostly joined up with Shattered Dawn. Elysium Strife also called time on their stay, and many of their former members joined up with Fury. The 2.5 theme of players gradually collecting in fewer alliances continued.

All Our Eggs in One Basket ... But What a Basket:As they continued their conquest of the planets on the back of the early raids, the second stage of Fury's plan for the round kicked into place. These raids had netted a huge nest egg, and the large number of planets also contributed significant income. The money was to be invested into one fortress planet to house their fleet safely. The other planets would be defensible but also empty and easily retaken if someone tried to conquer them. As for if someone tried to capture their fortress planet, that would be an impressive feat. The chosen planet was one they had captured from Unbroken Fellowship in the 8k system. Hundreds of billions were invested into it as masses of turrets, drones and shields made it a tough proposition to take. To make it even trickier, the planet was located on a jump node - meaning no attackers could leave aggressive drones overhead. The big planet was designed to be even bigger - but the final investment into EMP turrets had not yet been made.

The round began to turn around this planet, Source of Juffo-Wup - more commonly known simply as 8002. Unless it was taken, Fury's dominance was absolute - their traders, hunters and particularly their expensive raiders could shelter on the planet. For everyone else, it was simply a matter of time before they were raided out. Among the last alliances holding their own planets were the coalition of Shattered Dawn, XF and Guardians of Destruction, who had become the clearest opposition. These three were the most likely to put up resistance to Fury and make an attempt on the fortress, and it was clear that they were levelling their raiders with a specific aim. Fury plans were made to raid the main GoD planet and kill these raiders. However, some Shattered Dawn members had access to an account in Fury and had warning on the attack. Despite the restocking, the planet fell - but the valuable raiders were elsewhere.

The Siege of 8002:Plans were formed to raid the fortress. As a result of the hacked Fury account, SD were able to get a full readout on both the planet build and the defense strategies. The build was an expensive version of the typical planet build, with missiles, rockets (sufficient to prevent a drone-raiding effort), EMP and beams. There was sufficient EMP on the planet to prevent all but a few shots from AI raiders; the amount of drones ruled out bubbles of any sort and the number of turrets made roulette raiding a non-starter. Drone-raiding was impractical with the number of rocket turrets. The large number of drones - and positioning on the node for easier restocking - meant that any strategy to avoid these wasn't viable. Power draining was theoretically possible, but a significant power reserve meant there would need to be a large time without anyone online, as a single restocker would be sufficient to stop the raid.

The eventual strategy was the ultimate siege - the only way to take the planet was through population draining. Three dedicated raid squads assembled and word began to spread as the raid began. Restockers comfortably kept the planet topped-up but the shots that did find their mark gradually began to eat away at the population. The scale of the assault became clear and leisurely restocking was accompanied by heavy jumps to hurt the assault early. Towards the end of the day, the expensive raiders were pirated to keep them alive. Some of these had already gone offline.

The planet level had been reduced by the initial assault and several hours after SD, XF and GoD had suspended their assault, KAOS and GTG joined in the siege - their prepared raiders now able to withstand the lesser levelled planet. This was initially dismissed as opportunism against a key target, although later the obvious truth of the collusion on the raid date was confirmed. The raid continued along the same lines - little impact into the defences, but the population gradually lowering. The raid was punctuated by successful Fury jumps, each one interrupting the raid.

The assault resumed the following day. SD, XF and GoD picked up where they had left off and were joined by Phoenix, who contributed Kitaran raiders taking advantage of the lower planet level to inflict further population drain. The jumps continued on the second day but less successfully, beset by immense lag from the number of ships in sector and number of combats being triggered. KAOS, KPG and the now fully-allied GTG had joined SD, XF and GoD directly in sector towards the end of the first day. Ships from RONIN joined the assault, shutting down key stations and later providing cover and repair ships in sector. Warriors jumped through the raid several times- not in specific defense of Fury, but simply for the target. Their squads typically broke even but without inflicting much damage.

The planet was significantly weakened as the assault moved into a third day. The population was below a quarter of its level and increasingly impossible to defend. The third day would prove decisive. Numerous, increasingly desparate jumps were not enough to stop the raiders' progress, and many ships were lost attempting to pirate or kill raiders. The damage to the planet gradually increased. The population dropped to a critical point, and the power failed. Ships on the planet restocked frantically as the shots increased until the repairships were out of turns. As Fury readied a final jump, the planet fell. Fury won a clear victory in this battle as the planet was taken and retaken by each raid team in turn as the finishing shorts rained down, but the raid had been successful.

The attackers gradually dispersed, pirating their raiders and losing stragglers on the way. The planet itself was claimed by KAOS and fulfilling the pre-raid promise the defenses were razed to the ground.

Record Breakers (1) - Jade Triad Trade:Jade Triad formed with the rare sole aim of being a trading alliance. Many of the players had formerly been members of GTG or traditional heavy traders. The goal of the round was to break the long-standing alliance experience record set by the Pyrites wing of Lords of Fear in 2.1. With the experienced traders, a lack of target raiding or hunting against them and minimal losses along the way, they comfortably broke the long-standing record with a minimum of fuss.

Record Breakers (2) - Awakening Dreams Raid:AD had spent the last month of 2.5 speed-raiding low level ports, and set their sights for 2.6 on breaking Aerodyne's long-standing raid record. Predominantly using teams of polloid persecutors optimised to two-shot ports, their daily raids would target a succession of level 5 ports. In a quieter round, the frequent notices of unescorted raids attracted followers, however fast the raids were. Occasional pirates, pods and interference disrupted the raids. The 8002 battle kept the majority of ships occupied and afterwards removed a significant proportion of the warbird threat, allowing AD to catch up with the required raid rate. The record fell with three weeks left in the round.

Record Breakers (3) - RONIN Kill:RONIN also had a target in mind for the round, another record that had stood since 2.1 - Sigma Tau Sigma's kills record. The majority of the alliance spent the round in either hunters or bashers. Over the round they racked up a significant number of kills and were always close to their record. Most of the kills were gained through a combination of small-scale jumps, individual hunting and a wider bashing, supplemented by occasional raids. Once more, the record fell close to the end of the round but with sufficient comfort that it was not in doubt.

Tail End of the Round:Following the capture of 8002 Fury went into a full-scale rebuild. Most of the active alliances were aligned against them, and their fleet, bank balance and fortress planet were all lost. They were being targetted in raids by GoD, SD and XF, KAOS and GTG and also RONIN. After a month of trying to continue in the face of this opposition, it became clearly that Fury would be unable to keep a raid fleet of any significance shipped.

Fury came up with an alternative strategy. They would dedicate the entire alliance to trading, restore their fortress and then retaliate en masse - 2.6 had been promised as the last round before Nomad, and was expected to last for a while. The intensity declined after 8002, and the three record chasing alliances took advantage of this lull to close in on their goals, the Christmas period adding to the quiet. Eventually, Fury had restored their account balance, reshipped their raiders, recaptured 8002 and rebuilt it. However, the round end was unexpectedly announced - Nomad was not ready and another round would be ran. This rebuilding effort had been relatively futile as the gains would not be realised.

Individual Achievements:In a cruel twist considering the number of record-breaking performances, the Hall of Fame for the round was lost. Most of the individual achievements were part of group efforts, but Link leading the RONIN kills effort was a strong contender, although not in the context of other rounds. The AD trio of Beleger Nemesis, TORA and Hojna topped the raid rankings all with over 800 raids, and other AD raider tallies from this round helped to knock several Aerodyne out of the all-time top ten. No trader hit significant levels, although zer0das' frenzied cash-trading during the latter part of the round is worthy of note. 2.6 was more about group efforts towards collective goals than individual achievements.

Tactical Notes:Ship designs followed the same theme as 2.5 and the previous rounds - predominantly shieldbubbles for group combat, and drone-based ships for bashers. Racial and EMP weaponry were both heavily used and the odd item weapon also appeared. Drones rarely saw an appearance in group combat with the exception of Fury's early round sniv squad. Race choices became tactical on an alliancewide basis, not seen before - Fury focusing on zallun and snivs, and AD starting the round with predominantly polloids. The wider use of the persecutor this round showed it to be an overpowered raiding chassis; ready-fitted with lots of primary hardpoints and enough defence to be easily made into a shield-raider (as AD used) or an AI ship (as used by Fury). However, for raiding the biggest targets, the only option was still the battleship due to compulsary defensive equipment. The raiders for 8002 were built in the classic AI with top-up armour model used for all post-2.2 big planet raids - but due to the size of the planet were larger and more expensive than usual.

Round Summary:More than any other time since 'the' 1.0 round, the game revolved around the actions of one alliance. The Fury round-plan dominated from the start - despite the reset - and this predictably sowed the seeds for later retaliation. The build-up of 8002 threw this into sharper relief. The round would become the story of 8002; the three-day raid being arguably the most significant event in TDZK history. Away from this storyline, three alliances aimed for three very unique goals and all broke long-standing records from the long 2.1 round. This focus also was an indication in the drift of some aliances from the more 'traditional' TDZK conquest style. While the round was marked by the most contested event in TDZK, it was also one of the least contested rounds as a whole.

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.- Albert Einstein

Yes, I agree, but the restart put Fury in a pretty nasty position:We had to repeat the op, and we had to push up the schedule since we were worried that we might be beaten to the punch. Our designs were awesome, but they'd been seen and were really easily reversible, if anyone had cared to think for two seconds they'd have seen the same things we did and would have been able to do exactly the same thing. Not only that, but it'd have been pretty easy to jump us knowing that we were coming, and there were probably a few alliances that'd have been quite happy to do so.

So, despite having fewer turns, we pushed up the op and accordingly had to run it in significantly more difficult circumstances, as we needed more raiders and more cover both (both raiders and cover ran out of turns during the op). That op was probably the most difficult organizationally that I ran the whole time I played. We only had one alliance to draw on, we needed incredible turnout to pull it off, and then it ran on, and on, and on, with people moving in and out depending on their turns, etc etc. That op was a GIANT headache.

So, I felt pretty strongly that we'd been gregged over by the whole thing: it wasn't our fault the turns were handed out, and now our plans and designs were out. The difficulty level for the whole thing had just shot up a ton (when it wasn't easy to start with) and the work we'd done was totally wiped out. To add insult to injury, Aelanna had said that there was going to be no restart until Jerle pushed her to do it.

Fortunately, being pissed off can be excellent motivation on occasion, and accordingly I was more than ready to run that second op, and to basically say "balloons YOU" to the admins and to the game as a whole.

To reiterate two, three things I couldn't be bothered to repeat on IRC again:

Firstly, you have a superior knowledge of what was possible and what was planned by virtue of being in Fury. This sounds pretty obvious, but noone else knew exactly what was going on, what was planned or how it was done. To every single person watching, it was just you taking advantage of the turns handouts - you had max turns, let's ship raiders early as you have the numbers.

When it came to the restart, there was no jump, there were no copycats. You could have waited until day 4 and still been as successful - because everyone, almost without exception, not just thought but knew that the only reason Fury had been able to do all those raids was because of the turns handout. The thought that it was going to happen again - it didn't cross anyone's minds.

Secondly, the designs and the persies. Again, remember you had the benefit of knowing the plan - that it wasn't just for that day, but that these designs would be built on and used for bigger and bigger raids - that these raids would become the nest egg for the planet, that they were designed for making money as well as raiding.

Let's not forget that many people wouldn't have necessarily seen the raiders as well. Those who did - I was one of them - we saw they were persecutors and didn't think anything more of it. Yes, they were going to be upgraded and continually used, but those without that knowledge didn't realise that. To think they'd be copied because you did a day one raid - there have been day one raids forever. AD did lots of early raids because of the turn handouts, because we were going for the raids record, and we were in persecutors - the thought of anyone copying our design or plan didn't enter our heads. The reason? Probably everyone else had their own plan too (to a greater or lesser extent), and were acting on that.

Your worrying about the restart was paranoia because you knew the plans, and knew the end goal - noone else did and just saw it as an early set of raids that was opportunistic because of the high turns.

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.- Albert Einstein

Anyone with access to ARD could have easily done the math on the persecutors incredible money-making capability; they were devastatingly effective as AI raiders, only slowed by the higher drone count and larger number of EMP guns on the higher level ports. On the lower to mid-high level ports, they were stunning, dropping ports super-quickly through the shear amount of firepower brought to bear when you're using 60 TPPWs (and no need for reloads, too!).

Persecutors were a really, really, really obvious choice for profit-raiding.

FOAM-E wrote:Man, I told Solace we needed to build those damn EMP turrets.

Well, given how things went down, and the chain of events that were necessary for the planet to fall, I don't really think we misjudged anything... except perhaps the character of some of the playerbase. We probably should have known better, granted... personally I didn't really expect anyone to want to work with SD given their reputation, but I guess we underestimated how much our dominance annoyed others.

We had the money to get most of them finished too (I think to ~95? the target was 100 iirc), we just tended to keep a rather large amount of cash lying around for reshipping people, building up the other planets, and emergencies. That was all drained during the planet defense rather quickly, not too surprisingly. We didn't realize that the fact that there were a lot of stockers probably meant that a planet raid was very imminent, though we knew it was coming soon. I don't remember when the account hacking was exposed, but this was probably a significant lapse on my part. Usually I could predict things like these, but I suppose it just wasn't part of my normal thought pattern of "well, we probably have got multiple comprised accounts- not spies, hacked accounts. I guess we need to put everything into that context." In the past, I had worried a lot about spies, but for some reason I wasn't so concerned in 2.6. A little bit of complacency perhaps. Or the cheating was a lot worse than even I imagined.

Even so, collusion of pretty much the entire game and rampant cheating to take us down? Eh, kinda sucks, but I think those who did that were tacitly admitting we were hands down the greatest alliance over the rounds. Whoops, you just gave us a compliment.

That being said, I never really significantly increased the amount of cash I generated (just traded the entire round, so it added up), although I was a lot more motivated and that led me to camp refreshes for longer periods of time. The bulk of the cash came from the entire alliance wanting to end the round on a higher note than the rest of it- I was pretty shocked at how much cash we generated in such a short time. In past rounds, it was always such a monumental pain in the arse to generate funds. But people really pulled together- truthfully, I didn't expect we'd be able to do it given the circumstances. I suppose we got pretty good at getting the job done despite the circumstances. I wouldn't be too surprised if this was the most money generated by trading by a single alliance in such a short time span. Like 456 billion in a month or so (I forget how long it took exactly)? Yeah, that's a lot...

Bit of an aside- it always kind of confounded me why alliances never generated that much cash in TDZK. Assuming each trader can net a billion a day, and you have 60 people, shouldn't generating lots of cash be relatively easy? I guess that's overlooking connection speed, amount of time to spent trading, etc- but even if you only have 30 people generating 500 mil, that's 15 billion a day, so around 30 days to generate 456 billion? I don't think I'm ever going to understand why it was so difficult for alliances to make lots of money. I guess people just spend way too much cash on their trade ships and die a lot. Or trade for exp.

I really, really loved the nebula that round... with stealth upgrades and my level advantage, I didn't have to worry about aggressive drones seeing me. My freighter only costed around 600 mil too. That was pretty much the ultimate irony of podding me- sure you killed me, but at what cost? It didn't even set me back half of a day of trading.

Anyways, I feel like a few Sun Tzu quotes are appropriate...

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. "

"To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. "

Also, after sleeping on it, I remembered something funny about planning at the end of 2.5. Sol and Iccyh hatched their little plan, and I'm like... okay, how exactly are you going to afford this? You guys are nuts, I'm trading all round. And Solace is like "no, we need you as a RC/hunter/blah blah, we can't have someone as active as you trading." And then I put my foot down and said I was trading, and that was that. It was my junior year of college, and my course work was such that I didn't have to time sit around at ops for long periods of time, but I could check the refreshes while doing my homework easily enough. It was also increasingly apparent that Blah and drcool were far better RCs at this point, and could probably train others easily enough. I was pretty sure I could generate a disproportionate amount of the alliance income though.

Also, Sol kind of didn't take my income generation skills that seriously at the beginning of the round, because he made me go around shuttling money to planets so builders could build, trading to planets so they had resources for building (I especially loathed this), and I vaguely recall even spending some turns building up a planet in 12k. I guess I lost a couple weeks of turns in the defense of 8002 too. So if my income did increase, it was probably because these things were gone with the sole focus being on rebuilding the planet.

But again, other people really stepped up. DeadCanDance and Fire also provided a ton of cash over the course of the round too- between the three of us, we produced 1/3 the alliance income. Probably another 1/2 or so from raiders/trading, with the balance being planet cash. I'm not even really sure if the income planets were worth the effort, given the amount of money/time invested in them. They did pay for themselves, but they were probably most worthwhile as a means of denying other alliances an anonymous place to dock. And once they fell, they were just funding our enemies. Of course, they were probably spending them on hunters and other stupid things instead of using it wisely since they had already won in their eyes.

Also- the fact we ever even had the chance to rebuild 8002 was a hideous error on the part of everyone who opposed us, about on par with me overlooking the fact that our information was compromised. The only things that were razed were the turrets, about 34k worth of shields, and some of the drones? The power, the resource production was all intact, and the shields were largely so. This let the population rise, and when everyone was off doing their own thing, it was simple enough to reclaim it and plop down the defenses we had originally intended to have on it in the first place. It's not like it was that big of a secret that all of Fury appeared to be trading...

If I were someone who hated Fury, I would have spent more time convincing my friends to get an account and sit around for a few weeks, so the planet could be made completely useless. Or even coordinate it as an alliance. I mean, this was supposed to Fury's ultimate defeat, after all. While picking off traders might be a lot of fun, that's a battle, not the war.

So I guess a few of our enemies having huge egos played into our hands in this respect- easier to get the individual kills and sit on IRC and laugh about it than to actually plan something and seal our defeat.

Last edited by zer0das on December 15th, 2010, 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

zer0das wrote:Bit of an aside- it always kind of confounded me why alliances never generated that much cash in TDZK. Assuming each trader can net a billion a day, and you have 60 people, shouldn't generating lots of cash be relatively easy? I guess that's overlooking connection speed, amount of time to spent trading, etc- but even if you only have 30 people generating 500 mil, that's 15 billion a day, so around 30 days to generate 456 billion? I don't think I'm ever going to understand why it was so difficult for alliances to make lots of money. I guess people just spend way too much cash on their trade ships and die a lot. Or trade for exp.

Or they were just lazy.

I found it quite easy to make large amounts of money. I even used a lot of my own money to supply certain people (DD) with ships after they blew their ships up (again) and Velox refused to give them AA money.

Trading was goddamned mindnumbing for some of us, that's why. I could spend hours wandering around a nebula looking for a single random kill but trading for three refreshes left me wanting to murder somebody.

PS: Iccyh, yeah, I know those last turrets were stupid pricey, but IIRC we had the money in the AA to build more than we had constructed. It was being saved for ships at the time, IIRC.

Ah, ES disbanding. There was quite a bit of drama behind the scenes the led to the drop-off from 2.4 activity. We were plagued with activity problems. VT and Viri went inactive early on because they were in the process of moving, and Imperialist disappeared into the mist for some time, leaving the subcommanders in charge. There was also a lot of infighting among the ES leadership, eventually leading to both Korvan and Reven leaving the alliance.

We did what we could do keep the alliance afloat, but other than a few actives, most of the alliance either left of went inactive. When VT/Viri did return, there was a lot of discussion of whether or not to continue in 2.6. Eventually, everyone wanted to do other things, and much of the ES leadership went to FURY. I tried my hand at taking the reigns of TR, and after some successful small-scale raiding I joined a few other alliances (including Arcani and Nu-IGF) before I also ended up in Fury, which was probably a bad idea, as it only added fuel to the "Fury are admin hax!" argument. We probably had half of all TDZK staff at that point.

I think this needs to be stressed. Raiding 8002 was so emotionally and physically draining. A 3 day raid? I felt spent afterwards, for AWHILE. The lag was unbearable. It completely changed combat and warbird build strategy. Carriers could spend 1 or 2 seconds IS before having to restock for drones. Any longer and it was a pod-ride. As a result, Carriers were often best used for picking off stragglers who left IS or went to go and restock at a station.

I'd also like to add that in typical Warrior fashion, they remained neutral, but decided to jump the raid a few times just for rainbowssss and giggles.

That was completely Fury's round. We may have downed 8002, but Fury was "the man" and everyone knew it. The following round, everyone was waiting for Fury to make a move, I guess they got burnt out from their intensity in 2.6

This round was the last Admin World Quest. Closest I ever came to getting to that heavenly System Number 42. Silkk and myself (and one other, the name escapes me) spent the entire round (sans 8002 raid) looking for items, clues, etc. My favorite memory of this round was when KAOS was were recruiting Liwenna, we were practically grilling her for Admin World knowledge before her interview with the other leaders was even over (the interview was merely a formality, you were in the moment me and Silkk saw you applied).

If Aelanna reads this, could she please say how that quest was supposed to go? Did you implement the complete quest by the time the round ended? Or did you not get it all added in time?